


hit the ground running

by orphan_account



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-21
Updated: 2010-10-21
Packaged: 2017-10-12 19:43:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,627
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/128369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I travelled halfway around the world for you. I dealt with the <i>French</i> for you."</p>
            </blockquote>





	hit the ground running

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from Swan Lake's "Are You Swimming in Her Pools?"

It starts, though Eames didn't know it at the time, when Arthur tells him he loves him. It's muffled into Eames' clavicle, Arthur fucked out and warm with approaching sleep, and Eames had translated the slur of words into something that made his heart press tight in his chest.

"You too," Eames says, voice coming out a little rough, a lot honest, and Arthur goes tense and tight against him, but Eames strokes his back until he settles, until they both sink into sleep.

Arthur's gone the next morning. He's booked a flight out of Vienna using an alias that he's aware Eames knows, so Eames figures it isn't as though Arthur doesn't want to be found. He's on his way to Boston when Eames wakes, and Eames takes a long shower before he follows him stateside.

Boston is full of terribly rude people who make Eames fear for his life every time he crosses the street into the path of cars that appear reluctant to stop for him. He's only been there for a few hours, dodging traffic and trying to remember if he has any contacts living here, when Arthur's alias pings with a bus ticket to New York.

Eames follows the little nuisance, lets the city swarm around him as he waits for Arthur to show up tagged in a hotel room somewhere, for Arthur to pop out of a sewer grate somewhere, like the ghost of bloody Christmas past, and tell him about a job, tell him about some terribly important job that dragged Eames out of a pleasant sleep in Vienna with Arthur gone without a note. Perhaps Cobb is dying. Perhaps Cobb is dying and has relocated to Boston, wait, no, New York, in order to do so.

Three hours later, Arthur's on a flight to O'Hare, and Eames is no longer amusing himself with possibilities, just follows on the next flight to Chicago with a grim purpose and a multitude of texts sent to Arthur, all gone unanswered. The thing is, Eames is not a stupid man. If Arthur was trying to get away from him, truly trying, there would be no way on earth Eames could find him. If Arthur was in danger or on some sort of important job, he would have contacted Eames by now.

Which leaves the distinctly unpleasant possibility that Arthur is punishing him for something he cannot figure out, or testing him for some sadistic reason. Eames can't figure out what it could be, so he grimly soldiers on.

Upon landing, he crashes in the first hotel he finds, sleeps like only the dead and the jetlagged can manage. When he wakes up, Arthur's still in the city, but he's gone to ground somewhere. Eames sends out tendrils, asks for word, but there's nothing.

Eames goes to a baseball game the next day, for lack of something better to do and out of the stubborn need to have Cobb repeat "You don't watch _baseball_?" at him every time they see one another, like he's forgotten Eames is very British, thank you, and would much rather a football game because at least it isn't _boring_. The game is tremendously dull, and involves two different coloured socks vying for the most runs around a tiny little diamond. It's almost quaint.

Eames picks up just enough to be able to mock Cobb mercilessly for finding interest in the stuff, and then Arthur's on the move again, a flight to Montreal, so Eames has to leave during the seventh inning stretch. He doesn't terribly mind.

From Montreal, Arthur's hopped down to Quebec City, for reasons Eames can't fathom, since Quebec City is barely a city at all. Eames can't imagine why Arthur chose it, unless it's because of the thinly veiled disgust on people's faces whenever Eames opens his big fat British mouth .

Actually, Eames knows exactly why Arthur chose it.

He harasses a hotel employee for Arthur's whereabouts. It doesn't going well; the man doesn't seem to speak English, and Eames' terrible French isn't helping, especially since they speak an entirely different sort of French here, rude and rough around the edges. Eames has resorted almost exclusively to pantomime. He's lucky he's very good at it.

It's when he finds out Arthur's only fifteen minutes gone, ten of those minutes wasted attempting to breach a language barrier, that he loses his patience entirely. He considers punching the man in his big fat smug French face, but a stint in jail will only increase Arthur's head start.

"We should have colonized you when you were weak and feeble," Eames tells him instead, and then the man looks like he wants to punch Eames in his big fat smug English face. And honestly, the fact he could speak English the whole time, let Eames make gestures for _thin_ and _cruel_ and _devastatingly handsome_ , makes Eames want to start a brawl.

Instead, he looks up tickets in the business centre, resignedly follows Arthur to Hungary, via Toronto, and then Munich, and then exhaustion squared.

Budapest is beautiful, but Eames doesn't have much energy to enjoy it. He tucks out on the cheap side of the river, stares across it to the mansions and grand hotels. Arthur's probably somewhere across the Danube, happily asleep in a five-star hotel, and Eames has never been much of a swimmer.

He falls asleep on a scratchy comforter, too tired to tug the bedding down, and when he wakes up, ten hours later, Arthur's already left the city, probably all bright eyed and bushy tailed from the few hours he'd snatched and the sweet pleasure of torturing Eames.

He takes the train to Munich, which Arthur's gone back to, and wanders around the streets, aimless, waiting for a sign, because he can't quite manage to muster up the urge to canvass every hotel in a city this size. Arthur would be gone before he'd even gotten close.

Instead, he pulls out his phone, sends, _youre an appalling prick. why even go to budapest, then?_ to Arthur's number, and Arthur sends back _I like its architecture_ , as if that makes him any less of an asshole.

Arthur hops out on another flight before Eames has done much more than walk around, sliding in through Turkish neighbourhoods and getting coffee that rolls bitter down his throat and keeps him conscious.

He flies to Mombasa, and Eames kips out during the flight, lands and doesn't search for Arthur at all, just goes to visit Yusuf, smokes a joint and listens to him laugh at Eames for his pathetic quest for Arthur's favour.

Arthur doesn't move for days, and Eames tucks out on Yusuf's couch and sleeps snatches whenever he can, thinking this might be Arthur's kind of mercy.

When Arthur does fly out, it's to Mexico, via a staggeringly long list of cities, and Eames spends what amounts to days memorizing cities by their airports, attempting to nod off in chairs that remain stiff and painful wherever he goes.

Eames catches up to Arthur in Puerto Vallarta, or, rather, Arthur lets Eames catch up to him in Puerto Vallarta. Arthur's sipping some fruity cocktail at an all-exclusive resort, lying on a beach chair in a loose shirt and khakis. He doesn't look like he belongs there at all.

"This is tacky," Eames is the first thing Eames tells him, gesturing at the fat, sunburnt tourists, the gaudy hotel rising up beside the cool blue of the ocean.

"You like tacky," Arthur says, squinting up at him through the sunlight.

"This is _tremendously_ tacky," Eames says, and Arthur smiles a little. His nose is pink from the sun.

Eames sits on the sand beside Arthur, because he has had more than enough monstrous reclining chairs in his lifetime. One inception, and suddenly Eames can no longer abide lawns or beaches. "You stopped running," he says. It's a question, really.

"I wasn't running," Arthur says.

Eames raises an eyebrow at him.

"I was angry," Arthur corrects.

"Only you," Eames says, figuring it out, "oh my god, only you could get angry at someone for loving you back."

"I didn't believe you," Arthur says, and he looks relaxed, lazy with the sunlight, and Eames can feel his anger flaring, because he's travelled halfway around the world and Arthur's never heard of the word gratitude in his life, but underneath the repose, Eames can see everywhere Arthur's strung through with tension, with nerves.

"I travelled halfway around the world for you. I dealt with the _French_ for you," Eames says, and it doesn't come out as accusing as he'd like it to, just comes out like a declaration.

"Well I believe you now," Arthur says, easy, like he'd never doubted it at all.

"I've changed my mind," Eames says. "You're a passive-aggressive little bitch and I hate your guts."

Arthur hums something like laughter at him, and Eames leans his head against Arthur's thigh.

"But really," Eames says. "This is terribly tacky, can we please not have our grand romantic gesture in a paragon of colonial greed?"

"You say the sweetest things," Arthur says, and runs his fingers through Eames hair. Eames closes his eyes and listens to the ebb and swell of the ocean.

"You're a sadistic prick, by the way," Eames says, gone drowsy with the heat and the lull of the water, the feel of Arthur's fingers over his scalp.

"I honestly just needed to get away for a day," Arthur says, low. "And then you kept _following_ me."

"You made it easy to follow you," Eames mumbles.

"You made it easy to send you to Quebec," Arthur says. "I've been dying to do that for years."

"Sadistic prick," Eames repeats.

"Yeah," Arthur says. "Yeah, I love you too."


End file.
